Fixing accessibility issues

Ensuring our website is accessible to all users is a top priority. While many accessibility checks happen automatically with Editoria11y while you edit, DubBot provides a comprehensive, sitewide look at accessibility health, identifying issues that might be missed during the initial drafting and publishing process.

Overview of accessibility issues

The Accessibility section in DubBot audits your site against WCAG 2.1 AA standards. When you open an accessibility report for a specific page, DubBot categorizes issues into three levels of impact:

Critical: Results in blocked content for people with disabilities. These must be fixed immediately. Often require contacting web developers to remediate.
Serious: Results in significant barriers and frustration for users. Remediation is a high priority. Often related to plugin settings or inaccurate code.
Moderate: Results in some barriers, but does not prevent access to fundamental features. Often easy to fix and can be updated by editors.

Moderate impact

Moderate issues are labeled as moderate in the Impact column of the issue results.

Examples of Moderate Issues

Moderate issues often relate to the Boise State Web Theme’s use, style consistency, and affect the general usability of your page. These issues are often easy to fix and can improve your over all accessibility score. The categories of moderate issues are content and navigation, media and tables, and forms and interactive elements.

Content and Navigation

Examples of moderate content and navigation issues include:

Heading Issues: Missing H1 tags or having multiple H1 tags on a single page.
Link Clarity: Using “Unclear link text” (like “Click Here”), underlined text that isn’t a link, or bolding entire links.
Directional Terms: Using phrases like “See the link below,” which don’t make sense to screen reader users.

Media and Tables

Examples of moderate media and tables issues include:

Alt Text: Missing Alt text on News Feeds or adding descriptions to images already marked as “decorative.”
Table Usability: Missing scrolling options for mobile tables or using “Layout Tables” instead of proper data tables.
Document Links: Flagging links to Google Drive documents to ensure they checked for accessibility.

Forms & Interactive Elements

Gravity Forms: Flagging the use of “Date Pickers” or using asterisks instead of the word “Required.”
Theme Blocks: Blank title fields in theme blocks or empty section navigation.
Typography: Use of inaccessible fonts or formatting that hinders readability.

Manual Review Required

Additionally, there may be moderate impact items that require a manual review. The Web Accessibility Team monitors these issues and will contact you if there is something that relates to your specific content.

You can find detailed guidance in DubBot for how to resolve each of these moderate issues. If you have questions you can contact the web accessibility team at OITAccessibility@BoiseState.edu.

Serious impact

Serious issues are labeled as serious in the Impact column of the issue results.

Examples of Serious Issues

Serious issues create significant barriers and frustration for users with disabilities. These may or may not require development to resolve. They may also represent missing or incorrect code that needs to be cleaned up.

Examples include:

Link does not have readable (discernible) text: Links that are empty or only contain an image without alt text.
Improper List Structure: <ul> and <ol> tags that contain elements other than <li>, which breaks screen reader navigation.
Invalid ARIA attributes: Using code attributes that don’t match the element’s intended purpose.

You may or may not be able to resolve these issues on your own. Review the documentation provided in DubBot for how to resolve these serious issues. If you have questions you can contact the web accessibility team at OITAccessibility@BoiseState.edu.

Critical impact

Critical issues are labeled as critical in the Impact column of the issues results.

Examples of Critical Issues

These critical issues are fundamental accessibility blockers and must be addressed immediately. They prevent users from navigating or completing tasks and often require development work.

Examples include:

Buttons missing discernible text: Interactive buttons (like “Submit” or search icons) that lack a text label for screen readers.
Form elements missing labels: Input fields that aren’t properly linked to a text description, making them impossible to fill out for some users.

You may or may not be able to resolve these critical issues on your own. If you have questions you can contact the web accessibility team at OITAccessibility@BoiseState.edu.

Finding accessibility issues

Accessibility overview screenshot — Quickly view your site’s accessibility score, the recent score trend (increasing or decreasing), and number of total accessibility issues found across number of pages.

On your site’s dashboard you will find an issue category for Accessibility. This provides a quick look at your sites overall accessibility health and links to two methods of addressing accessibility issues

“X Issues“: Displays a list of all the individual issues found on your site. This is helpful to see what your most common issue is. To access a list of issues select the number of issues link then you can drill down to individual pages.
“X Pages”: Displays a list of all pages with one or more accessibility issues. This is helpful to quickly access your pages that need attention. To access a list of individual pages select the number of pages link. Then you can drill down to individual pages.